Revolution Televised.pdf

168 That Nigger’s Crazy
being drunk and stoned at the time. 33 When he went out onstage,
he criticized the audience for “‘cruising’ Hollywood Boulevard
‘when the niggers was burnin’ down Watts.’ Then he bade them
farewell: ‘Kiss my happy rich, black ass.’” 34 As complimentary as
the telegram first appeared, Bryant was not an advocate to have in
1977. However, Reid takes the opportunity to go on and express
how he feels about Pryor. In closing, Reid acknowledges that the
ratings were so low that their show lost to one on PBS called The
Armadillo, Nature’s Little Tank.
When Robin Williams takes the podium, he calls Pryor a genius
and, in addressing Pryor’s wide range as a comedian, he says, “Now,
who else can take all the forms of comedy, slapstick, satire, mime,
stand-up, and turn them into something that will offend everyone?”
The other cast members discuss various parts of Pryor’s life, from
his altercations with the law to his drug use and notorious sex life.
Several skits follow, and Pryor eventually closes the episode and series
from the scene of the roast and simply thanks everyone.
One can consider the two variety shows discussed within this book,
The Flip Wilson Show and The Richard Pryor Show, and see them
as the polar opposite bookends of a black television era. The Flip
Wilson Show was entrenched in the ideals of integration. Although
striving for the inclusion of black performers and opening up television
to some levels of vernacular black humor, Wilson generally
kept confrontational black political attitudes under wraps and enjoyed
a successful television career. Pryor, on the other hand, was
primarily about confrontation with mainstream U.S. politics as well
as with the ideals of a black middle class that would rather conceal
the presence of underclass blackness. On either the stage or the television
screen, Pryor did not mask his sarcasm toward the U.S. political
system and the continued oppression that African Americans
faced on a daily basis. He thus brought to light and humanized the
black underclass, the victims of racism who were still not allowed
to benefit from the so-called gains that integration offered. As
much as NBC executives said they wanted Richard Pryor, they were
more interested in the Bill Cosby type, which they would obtain in
the following decade.
Pryor understood the business of television but was still angry
about the situation of his show. He believed that while television